Wednesday 18 January 2012 13.01 EST
First published on Wednesday 18 January 2012 13.01 EST

The Metropolitan police has a new mission – to deliver "total policing" to the people of London.

This week, Bernard Hogan-Howe, the new commissioner, set out his vision of what this involves: about how modern policing is multidimensional, encompassing a diversity of tasks beyond just preventing and detecting crime. He suggests total policing requires "a total war on criminals", "total victim care", and being totally professional. In so doing, he is seeking a more rounded depiction of the police function in society than those formulations that pivot around just one aspect (crime-fighting, zero-tolerance policing, intelligence-led policing, etc). But if it is to be a viable policing model, then three key problems cannot be overlooked.

I sought to develop the idea of total policing in my 2003 book Understanding Social Control. I understood it to be analogous to the "total football" approach of the pioneering Dutch side of the 1970s based upon adaptability, flexibility and interoperability of the whole team. So rather than having players who specialised in only one position, all players were expected to swap roles according to the flow of the game.

In his lecture, Hogan-Howe acknowledged this connection. However, the proposed changes to Operation Trident and policing of gangs that he trailed do not appear consistent with the broader philosophy he is espousing. For they will continue to define this as a specialist operation, rather than mainstream policing.

Over the past decade there has been a subtle shift in the internal social organisation of policing, where individual officers and departments have increasingly specialised in particular issues. So, where previously most services were delivered to the public by "generalist" uniformed constables, today an array of police specialists are required because they can respond only to particular problems.

Specialisation has been pursued as a way of improving the quality of service to the public. However, it also carries risks. Police focused on one task, dealing with only one section of the public, may view the whole world through that lens and struggle when called upon to police other situations. Total policing, as I understand it, should seek to limit rather than encourage this trend.

A second problem for the commissioner is the potential for "control creep" – a progressive expansion of police involvement in dealing with a range of problems using an expanding menu of tactics. What Hogan-Howe needed to clarify, but did not, are the limits to the police role in society. We may want police to "fight" crime, but that is different to engaging in an all-out "war".

A further problem for total policing in practice, rather than theory, is the significant cuts being made to police budgets and community safety partnerships funding. In essence, the commissioner's total policing philosophy is consistent with the public-service mantra for the age of austerity, that what is required is simply "doing more with less". However, given the worsening global economic situation we might need to think about a more radical adjustment.

Rather than "more with less", policing in future might need to consider doing "less with more" – intervening less often, but with more impact. And operating with fewer police officers, but who possess more skills: meaning they can deal with most problems the public bring to them at the point of contact, rather than having to pass them on to other specialists.